Just one Nebraskan's opinion

Saturday, April 29, 2006

Its been quite awhile since I've been able to post anything on here and I've been barely able to keep up with what is going on with my family let alone what is happening around here locally or statewise. It is getting close to that time of the year when we get the chance to make changes in our governance. With all the elected offices coming up this year, I haven't had any time at all reviewing candidates or just keeping up with news in general. A good resource for some information on the state level I have found from the New Nebraska Network. This blog is very well read and its nice to see some common sense for once. This is going to be a short entry (need to get a couple of kids to bed), but I will try not to be so much of a stranger and try to make at least one entry a week. :P

Sunday, October 02, 2005

It's finally happened, and it's about damn time. The "Hammer", Mr. Tom DeLay, has finally relinquished his post as Speaker of the House, but not with some crying and whining about political partisanship along the way. He seems to not even realize that Mr. Earle (the leading prosecutor and a democrat) has prosecuted more democrats in his lifetime, than he has Republicans. Where's the political partisanship there?. And at the same time he seems to also have forgotten that it was a Texas jury that indicted him. The lead foreman was even quoted as saying that "It wasn't the prosecutor who had gotten Mr. DeLay into this mess, it was Mr. DeLay himself that did." Add on top of this the investigation of Mr. Abrahoff and his financial dealings with the Texas republican, and the "Hammer" looks like he's in for a long road ahead.

Friday, September 09, 2005

I'm wondering what the Republicans are going to come up with for an excuse on this one. This and the revelation that Bush picked 5 of the 8 heads of FEMA that were unqualified for the job, knew it was just a matter of time before the Republicans dug their own graves. Democrats may not need Ann Coulter after all.

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

For you gaming fans out there, I came across an article that I can't believe I missed on CPU and GPU performance. Clearspeed has come out with a coprocessing board for PCI-X comps that supposedly gives at minimum 25 GFLOPS of performance. I came across this through the Stanford site (they were talking about recoding GROMACS to use the CX600)while trying to optimize my fah client. The card supposedly will contain 2 co-processors and with the standardization of PCI-X, you will be able to plug in 2 cards along with your graphics board, giving you a total of 100 GFLOPS of processing power. Couldn't find pricing anywhere, but is believed to range from a 1000 to 10000 US dollars, depending on configuration. You can go to the Clearspeed site for more info.

Sunday, September 04, 2005

Was looking at some of the adverts google had on my blog, and they are always advertising their "proof" of intelligent design. Well I decided to go to one of these sites, and I figured I would provide a transcript from www.benevolentdesign.com of their "proof". It read as follows:

"THE STAR OF BETHLEHEM

The Gospels tell us that before Christ was born, three wise men from the East (called Magi) knew that the world’s Savior was about to be born. The three Magi were very knowledgeable and understood that a new star would appear in the sky and the star would mark the Savior’s birthplace. The three Magi saw the new star, made a lengthy journey and followed the star, found the baby Jesus, paid homage and gave Him gifts.

The reason we remind you of all this is that we believe the Gospels are telling us the Magi were good men, and they were knowledgeable in astrology.

That’s right, the Magi were astrologers.

We know there are many Christians who believe that astrology is forbidden but we assure you that is not the case. If astrology were forbidden by Christ’s true teachings, why would the Gospels tell us this story about the Star of Bethlehem?

In fact, there are over 600 references to astrology in the Bible and none of the references condemn astrology. (See footnote 1.)

At the Christian Guardians, we believe that astrology is much like most other things. Just as there is good and bad in almost everything else, there is bad astrology and there is good astrology.

You must be wondering what has any of this to do with Intelligent Design?

We talk about all this because we have discovered a way to disprove Darwinism by using good astrology, and we have improved Intelligent Design by using good astrology. The astrology we are using is the astrology of the Three Wise Men who foretold of the Bethlehem Star and successfully followed it to Christ’s birthplace. The Three Wise Men were MAGI and their special form of astrology is called Magi Astrology.

Magi Astrology is so different from any other form of astrology that 95% of Magi Astrology contradicts other forms of astrology. The beauty of Magi Astrology is that it disproves Darwinism and proves Intelligent Design. Magi Astrology helps to move Intelligent Design to the very high level needed so that Intelligent Design can make accurate predictions about genetics, the weather, and other areas that presently baffle scientists.

If you proceed on and read the material on this website and our other websites, we promise you what you read will improve your life, help you to believe in our Savior, and you will see the world in a much brighter light than ever before."

"The Navy announced yesterday that Vice President Cheney's former company, Halliburton, which has handled much of the repair work as well as support services for the U.S. military in Iraq, was hired to restore power and rebuild three naval facilities in Mississippi that were wrecked by Katrina.". Go figure on this one. You know there wasn't any time for bidding on this, so Halliburton gets another pork project, all because of its relationship with its former CEO.

Saturday, August 27, 2005

Have had a couple of people IM about setting up the folding at home client, and how best to optimize it, so I thought I would take a little time to go through everything and basically create a FAQ. The folding at home client can be found here. I have had a few people ask me which client to download, and I tell them it's up to them, but I have found the easiest and most useful one is the first. Don't install the screensaver or the console version unless that is specifically what you want to use. For you Mac people out there, there is also a fah gui client for Apple. Once you have the client downloaded, go ahead and install it, and when the properties screen comes up, make sure you enter 45949 as the team number, that is the Nebraska ALS team. You should be good to go from there. As far as optimizing your computer to get as many points as possilbe, here are a few pointers:

1. Turn off your screensaver. Screensavers use CPU cycles that the fah client could be using. If you are worried about burn in or power consumption, set your monitor to shut off after a few minutes in your desktop properties.

2. Start up as few programs or services as possible, provides for more mem and cpu usage to the client. Goto your run prompt and type "msconfig" to see what starts up on your computer. Be careful you don't disable something you need.

3. Rid yourself of any spyware on your comp. Goto the Microsoft site and get the anti-spyware beta, or lavasoft for AdAware, both these are effective at ridding your box of spyware.

4. LEAVE YOUR COMPUTER ON. Can't run the client, if the machine isn't on. If you are worried about power consumption, the main thing is to turn the screen off, the cpu being on overnight requires less energy than a light bulb being on for a few minutes.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Alright, finally got a team set up, so if you're interested in joining the Nebraska ALS team, just go to the folding at home site, and download the software, when it asks you what team number to join, it's 45949. You can view your stats at the Nebraska ALS team site. Was thinking about getting a little friendly competition going among the team members on a weekly basis on who has the most points. If you have any ideas just IM me. Also, if anyone has any graphics experience, I'm looking at making a banner for the team page.